Since
the release of the Focal Utopia back in 2016, the personal audio community has
more than a passing curiosity about Beryllium drivers. Brands like Periodic
Audio and Campfire Audio have dipped their toes into the fray and experimented
with it in some excellent sub $1000 releases (the $299 Periodic
Be and the $799 Campfire Cascade), to name a couple, but no one has
really launched another ultra-endgame flagship with a different take on what
beryllium drivers can do.

That all changes with the release of the ZMF Vérité
($2,499 retail, $2,199 preorder price in standard silk wood).

ZMF owner Zach Mehrbach researched the technology
originally when he launched his first dynamic driver headphones, Atticus and
Eikon in 2016. While he was intrigued by the blistering speed delivered by
ultra-stiff beryllium drivers, he felt most of the options he tried also had a
bit of a metallic hue and a somewhat strident "sheen" to their tonality.
Combined with the high cost of beryllium, he thought it best to move in a
different direction.

About a year later, in 2017, Mehrbach's
engineering partners suggested he try a slightly different take on the
technology: a PEN (polyethylene naphthalate) driver coated with vapor-deposed
beryllium. Mehrbach's interest was perked, and began investing in research and
development to push the technology. After several iterations, he came away with
a driver he felt was teeming with potential. A driver that could combine the
speed of beryllium with the organic tonality he demands form all of his
headphones.

In crafting the final Vérité, he started with
the driver in an Auteur shell and asked himself what needed to change to get the
best out of the driver. Vérité's cups maintain a version of the compound curve
geometry found in Auteur, Eikon and Atticus – an angled geometry that borrows
sonic principles from the design of a full-size concert hall – but Vérité is
the most open version of that design yet.

Coming from Auteur, Vérité's cup adds venting in several
areas, with an entirely new golden-ratio-inspired grille, five vents on the face
of the cup, and thirteen more vents strategically placed around the perimeter of
the cup. Mehrbach also moved the driver a bit farther away from the ear relative
to Auteur and angled it toward the ear about 30 degrees, to help ensure a more
spacious, three-dimensional sound than any of his other headphones have
delivered before.

Vérité comes with two sets of pads, the Vérité pads and
the ZMF Universe pads, allowing listeners to tweak the sound very slightly to
align with their preferences. The Vérité pads offer a slightly more linear
sound, while the Universe pads add more weight in the bass and low treble, and
give a slightly greater sense of space and depth. I usually preferred the
slightly more linear Vérité pads, so most of my observations below are
captured with them.

Without further ado, let's get to the sound.

A Flagship Of A Different ColorThe Vérité's sound is a somewhat unconventional combination
of attributes. The headline here is the extreme inner resolution and
ultra-accurate dynamics approaching that of the Focal Utopia. Great separation
and a vast soundscape approaching that of the HD800. Oh, and it's fast. Like
really, really fast. Transients blast out of the Vérité with machine gun speed
and sniper rifle accuracy.

While the expectation here is naturally a somewhat neutral
signature, ZMF bucks that trend entirely and does its own thing with a warm and
fun musical signature. The bass is punchy and elevated while the upper midrange
isn't pushed up in your face, as people have pretty much come to expect from a
hyper-detailed headphone. All-in-all, it's a bit off the beaten path – sort of
splitting the difference halfway between the slightly warm take on neutral from
ZMF's previous flagship Auteur and the bassier, more v-shaped, dynamic and
resolving signature of the Abyss AB-1266.

While non-neutral headphones tend to draw a more divided
opinion from the community, the end result here is quite impressive and often
times ends up sounding a little more like a killer set of speakers in a good
room than a headphone in many ways.

Breaking down the frequency response, the curve is a bit of a
slow and steady downward slope, starting with an especially robust bass
response. Bass is definitely elevated a bit above neutral, particularly in the
midbass, and packs an immensely satisfying visceral punch.

Sub-bass has full extension down to 20Hz, but there is a fairly
noticeable roll off in level between 30Hz and 20Hz. The bass continues to ramp
up volume from 30Hz to its peak around 60Hz with a little more gradual slope.
There is nice presence here overall, particularly from 40-60Hz giving a solid
sense of rumble for mosthip-hop and EDM tracks, though tracks where the
bass is centered a little lower in the 20-30Hz region will present in an little
more neutral fashion.

The midbass from 60Hz on up is extra beefy, giving basslines a
lot of weight and really lending a warm coloration to the headphone overall. To
my ears, it sounds like this area is elevated by about 3-4db relative to
neutral. This bit of elevation gives the headphone a fun character, particularly
with rock and metal tracks, which gain a bit of punch in the kick drums and low
fundamentals on top of the already stellar macrodynamics.

The warmth continues through the lower mids giving vocals and
instruments a lot of weight. As we move into the central midrange, the frequency
response flattens out until about 2kHz or so and then the very top of the
midrange slopes down a little bit in the presence region between 2kHz and 4kHz.

I wouldn't characterize the upper midrange as deeply recessed,
but compared to ZMF's previous flagship Auteur, sounds like female vocals seemed
a little more distant due to Vérité having a little less presence in the upper
harmonics to really "burn through" the mix. Conversely, shaving a couple of dB
out of this region makes the headphone sound less fatiguing overall and sort of
invites the listener to turn it up and rock out, which really allows the
headphone's spectacular dynamics to shine.

The Vérité's treble is outstanding in terms of pure
performance. Frequency plots show good energy in the lower treble around 6kHz, a
bit of a dip in the mid treble centered at about 8kHz and then excellent high
treble air from 10kHz on up. My ears tend to agree. Adding a little 2dB peak at
8kHz in my Roon EQ settings seemed to make things a bit flatter up top through
the mid treble. However, like the presence region an octave below it, scaling
back a couple of dBs in a more sensitive region gives the listener a little less
fatigue at higher volumes and over longer listening sessions. Ultimately, it
will be up to the individual listener as to whether this coloration is
preferable or not.

Resolution through this treble region is absolutely top notch.
It's hard to grasp in a vacuum, but direct comparison against the Auteur and
Sennheiser HD800 showed a sizeable gap in resolution whenever I stepped up to
the Vérité. Cymbals went from ambiguous splashes of treble to refined
instruments each with their own unique timbre. Jumping up another level to the
Abyss AB-1266 ($5,499 Deluxe Edition), Vérité hung very, very close in terms
of overall resolution, coming in just behind the Abyss. But here's where that
aforementioned mid treble dip comes into play – the treble was less fatiguing
on the Vérité compared to the Abyss and the sounds came through more easily
without drifting into sibilance. Of the four headphones compared here, I found
the Vérité's treble to be the most likeable by a fairly wide margin.

Top Flight PerformanceDigging into the technical aspects of the headphone, any
conversation about the Vérité really starts with the transient attack, which
is among the best of the best I've heard on any headphone, regardless of price.
If you want a headphone with a ton of snap and immediacy, Vérité will
absolutely knock your socks off with its beryllium drivers. This thing is
lightning fast and this speed boosts several aspects of the sound, lending a
sharp sense of imaging and a crystal-clean sense of clarity to every note.

On the back end, the cups play a key role in the decay
properties. Mehrbach experimented with several types of wood here to really give
the Verite the type of signature he wanted. He ultimately settled on silk wood
for the stock model, a softer wood with a nice romantic decay, and the harder
pheasantwood for the limited edition, which will be a bit faster and clearer
with harder hitting bass. Ultimately, this is always an area where ZMFs shine,
as the natural wood and clever chamber geometry always come off as super
musical, and it's a huge reason why the brand has grown the ultra loyal
following it has.

Another area where Vérité is truly elite is in the dynamics.
The headphone presents musical texture absolutely effortlessly in both a
macrodynamic and microdynamic sense. On one end, drums pulse and pound with
authority that is almost larger than life. On the other, the microscopic volume
difference between a couple of rapid keystrokes or guitar plucks is clear as
day, capturing the most subtle nuances of the original performance. Switching
from the HD800 or Auteur was like switching from a standard 1080P HDTV to a 4K
HDTV with high dynamic range. Everything gained a richer sense of color and
depth I didn't know I was even missing.

Comparisons between the three headphones also revealed the Vérité's
soundscape to be impressively large, sort of splitting the difference between
the HD800 and the Auteur, perhaps even leaning a little toward the larger HD800.
Verite sort of surprised me in this regard, due to the warmth and intimacy of
the sound signature and cohesiveness of the stage, but once I started putting it
head-to-head with other headphones the larger size became pretty apparent.

In spite of the size, I wouldn't call Vérité the most open
sounding headphone I have heard. Sounds from the HD800 and Hifiman HE-1000se
($3,499) seemed to come out of thin air a little bit more than they did on Vérité.
Vérité is more like hearing the performance in a finely tuned concert venue
than a wide-open space. I believe a good part of this is just the nature of the
tuning, due to the extra midbass and somewhat chilled out upper mids and treble.

It didn't bother me much overall, and playing around with my
EQ settings seemed to open things up a bit. Subjectively, I felt it was a bit of
a wash swapping between a more neutral EQ and Vérité's more euphonic stock
tuning. While neutralizing the sound with EQ made Vérité sound more open, the
stock tuning was a bit more fun. If the biggest knock on a headphone is "it
sounds like you're hearing the music in a finely tuned concert venue", you know
you're talking about a pretty special piece of gear.

Final ThoughtsOverall, this is a fantastic sounding headphone. It provides
the blistering attack and stiff damping you get from beryllium drivers with a
sense of organic tonality no beryllium headphone has been able to deliver so
far. The deep inner resolution of the instruments that Vérité offers has
absolutely ruined my other headphones for me, as whenever I am trying to compare
it to something else, I want to go running back to the Vérité.

I wouldn't quite say this is a headphone for everyone, as some
people will be a little bothered by the way it drifts away from strict
neutrality and others will want something that has a more open and airy vibe
like the Focal Utopia, HiFiMAN HE1000se or Stax SR-009. That's perfectly
understandable.

While Vérité does put a bit of its own signature on the
music, after extended listening sessions I felt like it was definitely a worthy
one, as it is both exciting and won't tire you out. This is a headphone you can
really crank up and rock out to, or dial in a nice medium volume and listen to
it for hours on end. As listening companions go, it's hard to get much better.